Victor's eyes slowly moved up in shock as the shadow of the gigantic object loomed over him. For a split second, his mind stopped thinking before the danger kicked in quickly.
Looking down, he quickly rushed to the steering wheel with a dark expression. 'You have got to be kidding me!! Why did that ship appear out of nowhere?! It's going to hit me!!'
With no hesitation, he steered the wheel to the maximum, making the boat turn around in a sharp angle. Meanwhile, the gigantic ship closed the distance between them quickly. Unfortunately for Victor, by the time he noticed the ship, it was already too late to avoid it.
*BANG*
A second later, the boat hit the side of the ship with a loud thud. Victor lost his balance as he fell to the ground. The glass window around him burst open loudly as wooden planks and debris flew into the cockpit.
Victor tried to move and stand up only for his eyes to notice something flashing past him in the blink of an eye an inch away.
Meanwhile, the boat continued its diversion as it broke through the side of the ship before slowly moving away.
"Hah… Hah…" Heaving up and down, Victor's eyes slowly moved to the side. There, next to his face was a sharp wooden plank, stabbed into the chair. It was planted so close to his face that he could almost touch it as he was.
'That was closer than I would've liked…' He thought to himself as he slowly turned around and looked around him. The entire cockpit was now a huge mess. Wooden debris from the collision along with sharp glass shards riddled the entire place.
"Fuck…" He muttered as he tried to stand up. At that moment, Victor felt a sharp pain assault his abdomen. Looking down, he noticed that his clothes were now bloody and the source of that was a small piece of wood plunged into his flesh.
"..." Frowning hard, Victor slowly put his hand on the wooden shard before slowly pulling it out. Clenching his teeth, he ignored the horrible pain and pulled the shard out in one fell sweep. Blood splashed out on the ground.
"Fuuh…" Victor exhaled a long breath before he pulled his shirt up. "That's not too deep, it's fine."
Examining the injury, he was glad to realize that the shard wasn't long enough to actually do any serious damage to him. It simply injured his skin and went a little deep, but it was nowhere near any vital organs.
"This was too close… This fucking ship almost killed me…" Cursing his horrible Luck, Victor turned off the engine as he stood up and inched his way out of the cockpit. Outside, his eyes fell on the side of his boat. There, he could see a horrible dent was created in the metallic outer layer.
Victor didn't even need to inspect the damage to know that it was really bad.
"Great. This is absolutely perfect." He sighed as he sat down with a groan. "The boat is barely holding on… And the reason for that is this goddamn thing…"
His eyes then wandered to the gigantic old ship that he smashed into. The thing was weather-beaten, silently swimming in the sea as if the chaos around it wasn't really doing anything to it. Its once-proud form was now a silhouette of a decay against the swirling mist. The hull, splintered and worn by the storm's relentless grasp, creaked mournfully as it glided with twisted grace through the gigantic waves. On the side of its massive body were two massive holes that were glaringly apparent even from his current position.
The entire ship felt like a ghost ship straight out of horror movies except far more realistic and far more unsettling.
"Is that ship haunted or something?" He muttered as he took a closer look. For some reason, even though it looked like an old, destroyed ship, Victor felt something weird about it.
"... Two choices I'm faced with right now. I can either pretend this ship isn't there and focus on fixing the boat or I can… Take a brief look inside."
He knew that the second choice was very risky, and very stupid so much so the old him would've immediately ignored that idea completely. But, the current Victor was a little different. Even though his cold, calculative, and careful side was still there, as prominent as ever, he had something new now.
'A whole lot of curiosity I gained.' He thought to himself.
Laughing to himself, Victor found himself leaning way too heavily toward the second option. 'Oh well, I have decided to explore this world. I cannot simply ignore this ship now that it appeared in front of me. Not to mention that this is the first thing that I have come across after leaving that island.'
So, with that in mind, Victor walked into the cockpit as he held his stomach, then he activated the engine and slowly moved closer to the ship while making sure not to hit it.
The closer he got to it, the more shocked he was by the state of this thing. "How is it still floating with all this damage? There isn't a single spot where it doesn't look like it's about to break down completely and sink."
Whatever luck this ship had, Victor wanted some of it. The boat eventually reached one of the big holes in the ship. There, Victor saw a rope hanging to the side of the ship, dangling near the water.
So, he took it and quickly tied the boat to it. "Hopefully this won't lose me the boat. But, I can't take my leisure in there. Two minutes is the most I can do."
Noting that down, Victor finally approached the edge of the boat and then jumped into the ship's hole, landing on a small wooden platform to the side, he looked around him.
"So dark…"
The interior of the ship was as he expected, completely wrecked. The ceiling was broken with some parts of it collapsed on the ground. He could see broken objects like chests and furniture everywhere.
After looking around for a few moments, Victor started walking deeper into the ship as he kept his eyes moving around. The sound of his steps on the wood creaked loudly, adding a layer of tension to the entire place.
'As if it isn't already terrifying as it is.' He thought to himself calmly. Luckily, Victor wasn't someone to be terrified of dark places as he had to work in that environment before.
It took him exactly 10 steps before he noticed something that made him stop. A dozen meters away from him, he saw someone lying on the ground, motionless. A ton of wood is stacked on top of them like a small hill.
Victor had already expected to see dead corpses considering the state of the ship but it still made him stop. After a few seconds, he started approaching the dead creature very slowly. Even though it was clearly dead, he wasn't going to put his guard down based on that assumption.
As he got closer, a whiff of blood and flesh reached his nose and made his face scrunch in displeasure. But, he continued getting closer, till he could finally see the dead corpse clearly.
The first thing he realized was that the corpse belonged to a man, perhaps a middle-aged one. His entire body was a bleedy mess and his face was completely shattered, perhaps after getting crushed by the heavy wood.
Brain matter, blood, and all kinds of nasty things puddled all around him like a cursed painting. However, the most interesting feature about this man by far was something only Victor would notice. A small detail that made him frown.
"... His body… It didn't start decomposing yet." He muttered as his eyes squinted. "This man had died very recently."
A//N: If you liked the chapter, support the book on your way!